Yong Sook Kim-Lambert

Artist Statement

Currently I am working on a series of painting based on my experience and response of my environment, a personal exploration of myself, my surrounding. It is a much different environment from the family I grew up on in South Korea. But my time allowed me to develop a connection with earth that still forms the basic of my art.

Materials stimulate my creative process. Mixed-media exploration has allowed me to combine my many interests into a creation and able to explore my love of drawing. I work intuitively deciding if the image is best portrayed with collage, image transfer, paint and draw.

Even thought most my paintings appear as an semi-abstraction, I have always consider myself a figurative painter and felt find a different way of exploring my understanding of the figure. I was looking for a way outside of the physical realm of the human form inspired by the visual language in poetry, in music, in memory. Summon remembered images or feelings which them become transformed over time so that the painting never mirror what I actually see but is leave me what an imprint of image and feeling which may be precisely expressed but not necessarily understood.

I was born and educated in Seoul, Korea (B.A in Fine Arts at Hong Ik University in Seoul). I met my Canadian husband in 1987 and have traveled to several countries in South East Asia, Far East Asia, Europe, South America and North America. These experiences have given me rich nourishment of Oriental and Western tradition. I participated in numerous exhibitions in Korea, Japan, China, France, Canada, and the USA. My work is represented in private and permanent public collections by institutions such as Loto-Quebec Art Visuel Collection in Montreal; House of Commons in Ottawa; Canadian Civilization Museum in Ottawa; Alleghenies Museum of Art in Pennsylvania and House of Delegates and Senate in Maryland.

I was awarded The Artist’s Magazine/Watercolor Magic Magazine Prize with tour showat the 134 th International exhibition of the “American Watercolor Society” held at the Salmagundi Club in NY, Monarch Litho Award at the 81 st National Watercolor Show at the Brea Civic and Cultural Center Gallery in CA with tour show. I also won 1 st prize at “The State Museum of Pennsylvania 2001” National Art Competition juried by, Judith Dolkart, Department of Painting and Sculpture at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, NY. I am a member of the Canadian Society of Watercolorists (SCA), National Society of Painters in Casein and Acrylic (NSPCA), Pennsylvania Watercolor Society (PWS), and San Diego Watercolor Society (SDWS). I have been teaching art at the Grier School since 2001.